Starfinder Alien Archive 2

Outer space is full of alien species both benign and malevolent. Starfinder Alien Archive 2 presents a host of new creatures designed for use with the Starfinder Roleplaying Game! From the laser-breathing tashtaris and starship-eating stellar protozoans to dust mantas and undead bone troopers, the creatures in this codex will challenge adventurers no matter where in the galaxy they may travel. What's more, player rules for a variety of species let players not just fight aliens, but be them! Inside this book, you'll find the following:

Over 100 bizarre life-forms both classic and new, from the voracious akatas and silicon-based quorlus to radioactive pluprex demons and void-dwelling vermin.

More than a dozen races with full player rules, letting you play everything from an uplifted bear to a sentient slug.

New alien technology to help give your character an edge, including armor, weapons, magic items, and spells.

New rules for magical polymorphing, environmental template grafts to modify creatures to fit any world on the fly, and more!

Average product rating:

Fantastic!

Better than Alien Archive in every aspect. Better illustrations, more content (also due to the fact that the monster creation rules were already presented in the previous book) and more polished. The addition of the polymorph spell and mechanics is amazing and super fun. You have bought AA1 because it's good but mostly because you need it... Then, I promise you'll buy this AA2 because you will WANT it!
5 stars!

A must have for the GM Toolbox

I'm still absorbing it, but beyond lots of cool creatures it adds quite a few "base" creatures and template grafts. Alien Archive 1's charts are great if you have time, but if you need some quick stats mid session for, say, a void dragon t-rex, you have one in a minute or less. I really like the improvements to the appendix and wish that Alien Archive's was that good - for example, it is nice to have a list of playable races and what pages they are found on. Starship-scale foes are few, but it's nice to be able to kill the giant space worm and then make a ship out of it's corpse.

So this has what I want:

Cool new races, cool Pathfinder monsters returning, new creatures for several outsider categories and cool new creatures.

It also helps that things introduced in this are type of variety that is really helpful when running homebrew games, like having several "templates" for different alien animal types is great. It also has good balance of fantasy, scifi and both mixed in.

Each alien does receive two full pages, but like before, many of those spreads will have two (sometimes more) stat blocks for various CRs. And because we don't need to re-explain NPC creation, we had room for more total aliens in this one!

That button isn't working for me either so you're not alone, but the formatting is as follows with the asterisks removed:
[Quote*]quote in here[/quote*]
[B*]this is bolded [/b*]
[Ooc*]this is blue[/ooc*]
[I*]this is in italics [/i*]
[Spoiler*]this is hidden in a button [/spoiler*]

The cover looks like a Vracinea, will AP aliens be reprinted in this archive?

I guess they might reprint a few from Pathfinder, and maybe a few from the Adventure Path, but I hope they'll stick with mostly original creatures, at least until the third Archive.

If they do reprint a few Pathfinder Aliens, I would hope it was Dominion Creatures (Chyzaedu, Neh-Thalggu, Rhu-Chalik, Lunarma, Neshmaal, Yangethe, Yah-Thelgaad, Shipmind, Intellect Devourer/Egophage, Vespergaunt and Ugothokra) although there are several other Alien races which could be brought forth into Starfinder (all the creatures associated with the Old Cults, Several creatures From Bestiary 1-6, Distant Worlds, People of the Stars, Numeria, Land of the Fallen, and Iron Gods)

Want to play an intelligent, multi-legged centipede? An emotionless, mask-wearing mollusk? and Uplifted Bear?

Not gonna lie, I want to take that "uplifted bear" and make a character called "Yogi" or run around yelling "only you can prevent forest fires". Can't wait to see them.

the centipede seems like an odd choice, but I'll roll with it, as long as it isn't tiny.
and the mollusk just sounds awesome.

Just in time for me to have birthday money to buy it with, although that means I have to wait 6 months (not including this month) and come back every weeks looking for possible questions that Jason or Owen might answer excitedly at 3 in the morning when the coffee pot has run out.

On that note, here's hoping for Mattresses! those of you familiar with towel wielding earthmen and editors from Betelgeuse might know what I mean.

I guess they might reprint a few from Pathfinder, and maybe a few from the Adventure Path, but I hope they'll stick with mostly original creatures, at least until the third Archive.

If they do reprint a few Pathfinder Aliens, I would hope it was Dominion Creatures (Chyzaedu, Neh-Thalggu, Rhu-Chalik, Lunarma, Neshmaal, Yangethe, Yah-Thelgaad, Shipmind, Intellect Devourer/Egophage, Vespergaunt and Ugothokra) although there are several other Alien races which could be brought forth into Starfinder (all the creatures associated with the Old Cults, Several creatures From Bestiary 1-6, Distant Worlds, People of the Stars, Numeria, Land of the Fallen, and Iron Gods)

Please, Paizo, reprint mi-go for Starfinder! I want to be able to canonically make by players relive that terror!

wonders if the Mollusks in the description are the Embri. must dig through the rest of the Core rulebook for further speculations. after I hibernate. I've used up three of my brains already by staying awake this late.

Aucturn:
Great Old Ones (possibly itself, at some point)
Elder Mythos/Old Cults (Great Old Ones, Outer Gods, any number of spawned races, and races dedicated to the worship of the Great Old Ones)
Dominion of the Black
Nyarlathotep, incarnate as the Black Pharaoh
Carsai the King
inhabitants of the pre-gap warships/madness-inducing hulks in the atmosphere
Orocorans (Alien Archives 1/First Contact)
the Midwives
Aucturn's child, Great Old One

ratcatbo, that would stifle the main purpose of the book, though. namely that DM/GM's are the intended users of the book, with players as a secondary market. if the races are separated from the other creatures, it would pose a significant problem in layout design, particularly in placement of redundant pages explaining why they changed the layout of their book series. besides, if the players use their knowledge of rules text in-game to kill a monster/NPC their character doesn't know about, you can just drop 6 great old ones on the party as "Divine Punishment for use of Metadata"

after flipping through Pact Worlds and some Pathfinder stuff. they've got about 4 or 5 Alien Archives worth of Aliens to choose from, not including AP Aliens. Congrats, Paizo, you are the masters of fluff books

Are these uplifted bears bipedal humanoid aliens (a la how rats are to ysoki) or are these more just literally genetically modified super-intelligent bears (basically how morlamaws are just super-intelligent technicolor walruses)?

Uplifted Bears? From like Golarion? I honestly don't care I've been wanting to play a bear like race for forever now.

Like Dickson's Dilbians. Let's hope they're on the upper end of Medium (if not actually Large) and have kind of a boisterous bruiser vibe.

And, seriously: I'm looking forward to the dirindi, sazarons, and various Veskarium and Azlanti Star Empire subject species to the same degree that I was looking forward to the maraquoi. Or, to switch away from playables: more Castrovel critters and everything outside of the Pact system.

Also, with D&D re-introducing the Giff, I feel Starfinder could use some interplanetary pachyderms. Could be rhinos (like the Judoon) or could be elephants, or hey maybe it could be hippos. Please consider.